Lovers
by Vesper Gray
Summary: Elizabeth has been left on the beach at the end of AWE, her new husband gone. But Jack is not and she is quick to go along with him when he sets sail....
1. Chapter 1

Here is my new Sparrabeth fic. It is set RIGHT after At World's End, when Elizabeth is on the beach after Will has left. Lovers Chapter One 

Elizabeth had stared out at the horizon long after Will had disappeared. She would not see him again for ten years, but she could still feel his kiss on her lips, smell his scent on her skin.

She just wanted to sink to her knees and cry- cry for all she had lost. Her father, Jack, Will….all were gone, especially her father. She would never see him again, although she doubted she would see Jack again. And Will…it would be hundreds of days before she spent another day with him.

But she knew better than to do that. Crying would only lead to more heartache and she needed to explore the island, figure out…what she was going to do for food.

She let her skirts drag through the wet sand, not even bothering to pick them up. It was miles, she knew, back to town….a small town to be sure, full of pirates and former pirates. She would feel at home there, but she never wanted to leave the beach, the place where she would go to wait for Will in ten years.

But for now, she needed dinner and a bottle of rum.

"We're devils and black sheep, and really bad eggs…drink up me hearties yo ho…yo ho, a pirates life for me…." Elizabeth sang softly, watching as the fire dwindled down to just small burning embers. She sang a lot at night, or had the past two nights since Will had been gone.

There was plenty of company in town, many people who wished to speak to the Pirate King. But she hated those glances, the glances of curiosity that followed her wherever she walked. She could hear the whispers at her back and feel their questions lingering in the air.

How she longed to be on a ship- any ship. She wasn't even sure what her purpose would be here, on this spit of land. Surely she couldn't stay here forever? Bound to a place and people she didn't know?

She tossed another twig into the fire. "Drink up me hearties yo ho." She whispered tonelessly into the darkness. She had taught Jack the song once on a beach quite like this one…on a fair night, with a fire blazing. Not like her little pathetic fire.

She dug her fingers into the sand, feeling the dampness of the Earth against her palms. This was real and true, making everything that happened on the Pearl and Dutchman seem like a blurry dream. A child's fantasy.

What had happened there would never happen again. And poor Will….bound to honor a job, away from everything he knew, away from her.

How did Calypso stand it, sending Davy Jones off for so many years? Was she really so cold and unfeeling a woman that it didn't matter? Didn't she wish him back?

Or had she simply loved more than one man and thought she could have it all?

That Elizabeth could understand. She knew what was right, her trust and love in a good stable man, a man of honor. But it was matched only by her love for a man that drove her wild with desire. A man of passion.

She would spend just one last night on this beach, she decided. She knew bad weather would come eventually and she would need to find a place to take shelter, but for tonight the beach would suffice.

She tilted her head back, peering up at the moon. The same moon Will looked at- the same moon that-

There was the crunch of sand behind her and she tensed, one hand going to rest on the pistol she had tucked into her boot. Who would have followed her out here?

Elizabeth looked different than Jack expected: her hair was pulled back but fell in messy tendrils around her face, and her dress was absolutely soiled by sand. He had just seen her a couple nights earlier, but….she looked thinner. Haggard.

He cocked his own pistol at her. "There you go trying to kill me again."

"Jack?" she lowered her gun. "What are you doing out here? I thought….where's the Pearl?"

"Just like a woman, only worried about me ship. The Pearl is…ah…."

"Barbossa stole it again?"

He shot her a glare. "Weren't you in the middle of questioning me on why I'm here?"

"Well now that I know you have no ship, I have the answer. But…how did you know I was out here?"

"I just knew, love." He sat down beside the fire. "Didn't think I'd get far in that dinghy, so figured I would commandeer a ship in the morning."

"Steal a ship? From Shipwreck Cove?"

"Commandeer." He corrected. "And what Captain Swann be doing then?"

"Turner." She replied softly. "I'm Elizabeth Turner now, Jack." Her eyes searched his, looking for…acknowledgement of this fact, approval, anything. But his eyes revealed nothing.

Jack mulled over the thought of telling her the marriage was a hasty one made on a ship and that only Will would be known as Captain Turner…now the immortal Captain Turner. She was the Pirate King, she was Captain Swann, she was Elizabeth, she was 'love', but she would never be Captain Turner to him.

If that blasted wedding had never happened, he wondered how things would be different between them now. Would she still cling to her loyalty to Will if there were no vows involved? Or would she take advantage of her flirtatious nature and move on?

And he knew she was restless yet. He knew Will had known that too, that Elizabeth wouldn't stay put in one place for ten years. She had never be content to do so, never content to lead a life where she was bound.

He brushed off her comment. "You can go, or stay here and brood."

His suggestion she come along made her heart speed up, her throat as dry as parchment. She could go. She knew she couldn't sit here for years, without her father or a friend to talk to.

And he knew that. Whatever his story- he had come here, to her, for a reason. He still wanted her, even if his lips would never speak the words. He had resisted her kiss aboard the Pearl, he might resist her forever, but he still cared enough about her to come make sure she wasn't going to drown herself in widow's rags.

She was going to be faithful to Will. But it was her life too and she didn't intend to spend it waiting on him. She had to go out, sail…live.

What an unsettling thought…that Jack knew her this well. When she knew so little about him, besides the fact that he was a GOOD man, a clever man.

A man that kissed very well.

She whirled about but found he was gone, walking back toward the inland. "At daybreak, then?" she called.

"Aye." What a mistake he might be making…again.

She just smiled, standing in the surf. Dear Jack….

To be continued….


	2. Chapter 2

**IMPORTANT NOTE**: I am so grateful for the interest in this fic, and all my fics, but it is disheartening to see only 5 people reviewed when I have been added to many people's author list. This means lots are reading, and very few are reviewing. Don't take this as a vent fest, but reviews make me inspired. It lets me know people are liking the story. So if you reading, please review. Otherwise, I give up hope and stop writing…that has happened in fandoms before. Just a helpful hint from a writer.

So the ones that did review- sweet misery t, ditte3, florencia7, Jack Sparrow 1245, Depperanium thank you, thank you! This chapter is for ya'll.

Chapter Two

He would leave without her, he vowed. He had no time to wait on her and her womanly fancies. He would just get a ship and leave-

"Jack!"

But there she was, half hidden in the moonlight, standing under a large tree. "Did you find a ship and a crew?"

"Ship yes, crew no."

"But how will we sail without a crew?"

"Because it is bad business to pick up a crew from the town that we just stole a ship from, savvy?" He said with an air of exasperation.

"Oh." That made sense. She trudged after him, through the fog. It was all foggy here in the early morning hours, no matter what the weather. It was as if the fog was supposed to shroud the island from the world.

"I thought it wasn't stealing." She remarked as he helped her up onto the deck.

"It's not." His voice was light, unconcerned, but she couldn't see him in this unnatural fog. "We'll find a port soon enough to pick up a crew."

He was at the wheel and she sat on the deck, only a few feet from him, but the distance between them could span an ocean.

The cold wetness of the air pierced Elizabeth's skin, despite her cloak. A chill ran through her, a sense of foreboding like a heavy rock in her stomach. The silence, the dark, the cold…it was all like when they had went to go retrieve Jack from World's End.

She knotted her hands together and knew she had to speak or go mad with her thoughts. "I can't see a thing. It can't be much longer to sunlight, can it?"

He heard the tremor in her voice and he wondered what the reason was for it. "Aye. Have sailed in worse."

She spoke rapidly, hating the silence. "When you were young?"

He almost snapped out a short answer to her question. He knew what she was doing…that she didn't want it to be quiet. Perhaps her own thoughts were too much for her. And she deserved to stew in her own thoughts but his damn mouth started speaking before he could stop it.

He always fell for Elizabeth before he could stop it.

"Been sailing all me life, I've seen many a day like this. Seen worse. Saw the worst storm of my life right after I left Tia Dalma's for the first time."

At the mention of Calypso her interest was peaked, but all she could focus on was the thought of Jack as a child…as a small sailor on a boat. She couldn't imagine him as a child but more than that she wished she could picture what his mother would have looked like.

She most certainly would have been beautiful, a creature with flowing dark hair and dark eyes, a small boy following her steps. Or perhaps she died in childbirth.

What she didn't know about Jack was endless.

"Tia Dalma? How did you come to meet her anyway, Jack?"

Sunlight was seeping in through the fog and she could see him just lightly now, his eyes distant as he watched the ocean. But the vaguest of smiles curled his lips. "I was working for the East India Trading Company."

Her eyes widened, fingers gripping the rail as if she was holding on for dear life. "You…worked for the East India Trading Company?" she sputtered.

"Not for a long time." He answered, waving her astonishment away with a wave of his hand. "But it was profitable." He tilted his head. "Bought a lot of rum."

"What did the Company have to do with Tia Dalma?" she pressed, knowing at any moment he would clam up or tell her an outrageous lie.

"They had some important cargo they wanted me to drop off. Slaves. I'm not in the business of that, as it were-," It always amazed her Jack would shrug off his good deeds, as conceited as he was. As if he was ashamed to be a good man. "I let them go, where she lives. And she was waiting for me, in the rowboat. She took me back to her cabin."

Jack could remember that night as vividly as he remembered Elizabeth's searing kiss on his lips. He had never been so instantly attracted to a woman as he had been to Tia, her large dark eyes beckoning to him even in the dark. Her dress had been skin tight and made of billowing folds that rustled like so many whispered secrets.

She had taken his hand and called his name and he never thought to question how she knew it. Her cabin had been so cluttered and he had had no time for staring about, the minute her hands were upon him he fell into a delirious oblivion.

He had never had a lover like her. She drew him into the darkness and barely let him breathe as the night bled into day. She was drowning him, not letting him come up for air as his desire for her overtook him. And as they kissed he could hear the crush of the waves and the roar of the wind.

He didn't know he was making love to the sea goddess, that he was feeling all of her power as she claimed him for her own. And he had waked up on his ship, in the midst of a terrible storm, still staring at the scratches her nails had made. He was in love with the sea and would always belong to her now.

But the sea he could understand. He didn't quite understand the creature that was sitting beside him, her face maddeningly soft and her very presence vexing.

Jack said no more about the storm or Tia, but the expression on his face made heat rush through her. She knew what had happened in the cabin that night, about what had probably conspired between them. And it was absurd to feel the sickly nausea of jealousy that some other woman had the man that she still desired.

Images flashed through her mind: Tia pulling Jack in her home, her mouth on his, her hands pulling at his clothes. It hurt, a blow to her chest like Davy Jones' sword.

She stood up in a flash, Will's name on her tongue. "The sun is coming up." She spun about, her heavy cloak weighing her down as she rushed toward the other end of the ship, clinging to the rail as if it was her life. A life that would never be intertwined with Jack's.

To be continued…..


End file.
